Industries for processing food animals and animal by-products are segmented into a number of distinct types of business units or organizational components with the components of each type concerned with a narrow aspect of animal (or animal by-product) production. For example, FIG. 1 shows a fowl growing and processing system (such as those used for growing and processing of chickens, turkeys, geese, pheasants, ducks, quail, game hens, pigeons, emus, ostriches, etc.), commencing with the breeding of the birds and ending with the packaging of bird meat, wherein the double lined arrows indicate the flow of birds through the bird growing and processing system and the single arrows indicate the flow of bird feed. That is, FIG. 1 includes the following distinct types of bird growing and processing components:
(1.1) One or more bird breeder farms 20 for the breeding of broiler birds; PA0 (1.2) One or more bird hatcheries 24 that receive fertilized eggs from the breeder farms 20 and hatch bird chicks from the eggs; PA0 (1.3) One or more broiler grow-out facilities 28 for receiving bird chicks from the hatcheries 24 and growing the bird chicks into birds having an appropriate weight for processing into saleable bird meat; PA0 (1.4) A feed mill 32 for supplying bird feed to the breeder farms 20, the hatcheries 24 and the broiler grow-out facilities 28; PA0 (1.5) A processing plant 36 for receiving birds from the grow-out facilities 28 and providing bird meat for distribution; and PA0 (1.6) A bird catching and hauling component 40 for catching and transporting birds from the grow-out facilities 28 to the processing plant 36.
Each of the above-discussed bird growing and processing components 20-40 are typically operated as individual profit centers. Accordingly, each such component is primarily concerned with increasing its own cost-effectiveness. In addressing such concerns, each manager operating one of the bird growing and processing components typically strives to lower the component's individual operating costs and still provide an "adequate" product to client bird growing and processing components. For example, the feed mill 32 may modify the composition of bird feed to lower its costs to the grow-out facilities 28. Or, a breeder farm 20 may reduce certain bird feed nutrients that does not decrease the number of fertilized eggs provided to a hatchery 24, but the mortality rate of the hatched bird chicks may increase, or, for example, a broiler grow-out facility 28 may reduce feed additives fed to its birds just enough so that the birds remain minimally healthy at the grow-out facility 28, but many may die while being transported to the processing plant 36.
Accordingly, the bird growing and processing industry as a whole currently has a reduced efficiency and profits due to such shortsighted practices as described above. Further, such shortsightedness is reinforced due substantially to the lack of a bird growing and processing analysis model and method that allows for a determination of the economic impact various factors have in affecting the quantity and/or quality of saleable bird meat from a bird growing and processing system as a whole.
Thus, it would be advantageous to various animal and animal by-product growing and processing industries to have a method and system for modeling their growing and processing systems, such as those of FIG. 1 so that variations in such a system may be detected and/or evaluated to determine their economic impact.
Additionally, note that similar organizational structures and concomitant problems may occur in the processing of quail, eggs, cattle, hogs and sheep.